Senator Edward Kennedy (D - Mass) will speak at The Graduate Center, City University of New York (CUNY), on Monday, March 1. Introduced by Graduate Center Professor Emeritus Arthur Schlesinger, Jr, Senator Kennedy will discuss the current economic climate and job creation issues. The speech, which is the keynote address of an all-day conference on welfare, will begin at 1 pm in the Proshansky Auditorium. The Graduate Center is located at 365 Fifth Avenue (34th Street) in Manhattan.

The conference as a whole is titled “Re-Imagining the Welfare State.” The morning session, from 10am to 12 noon, features a panel on The Philosophical and Moral Foundations of the Welfare State, including Jeff Madrick, New York Times columnist; Robin Blackburn; University of Essex; Jacob Hacker, Yale University; Heidi Hartmann, Institute for Women’s Policy Research; and Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law School. The afternoon panel on The Politics of the Welfare State begins at 2 pm and includes John Mollenkopf, Center for Urban Research, CUNY Graduate Center; Anna Burger, Service Employees International Union; Stanley Greenberg, pollster and author; Frances Fox Piven, CUNY Graduate Center; Leith Mullings, CUNY Graduate Center. The conference is sponsored by The Graduate Center’s Center for the Humanities, Center for Urban Research, and Ph.D. Program in Political Science.

The Graduate Center is the doctorate-granting institution of The City University of New York. A nationally unique consortium, the school draws its faculty primarily from leading scholars throughout the 20-campus system. More than a third of The Graduate Center’s rated Ph.D. programs rank among the country’s top 20.